The Oz Books: Read Them For Free

Now that “Oz, the Great and Powerful” is coming out, it reminds me of one of my favorite childhood memories. My mom was a great fan of the Oz series of books by L. Frank Baum (none of which was the basis for this movie, by the way). You can read all of these books free through the Library of Congress. The books are old enough to now be in the public domain.

My mom had to special order these books for me after her set of the books disappeared during a series of moves. She brought them for me for Christmas but they didn’t arrive on time. As soon as they showed up the bookstore, we both rushed excitedly down there to collect them.
I must have read those books a thousand times. I highly recommend them to imaginative children. I immersed myself in them and even went as Ozma of Oz for Halloween one year. It didn’t matter to me that no one knew who Ozma was. What mattered was that my mom spent hours fashioning a custom crown for me that made me feel like a genuine princess of Oz.

The books are create the illusion that Oz is an actual place, which Dorothy repeatedly visits. The books contain back stories on many of the characters in the movie, “The Wizard of Oz”. The collection includes:

Christa T. Palmer is a mother of 2 small children who lives in Colorado. She worked in the corporate world for more than a decade, but she was laid off the day after returning from maternity leave. Since then, she has worked as a freelance writer.

I would have been such a dork about that game. I'm still crushed that my mom's books disappeared. I kept hoping they'd turn up.

Delta SierraMarch 6, 2013 at 11:21 am

I read all of them I could find, as a kid. At a low point in my life, I sorta had Glinda the Good Witch as a totem, to think about and feel better about things. Note: I have never seen the movie. Don't want to muck up a perfectly good relationship with the characters.

RowenMarch 6, 2013 at 11:31 am

The two faced cannibal people scarred the tar out of me when I was a kid.